RED ZONE FILES: PTI's festering fault lines.

Byline: Fahd Husain

Fawad Chaudhry's interview has opeAnAed a can of worms. This was fully expeActed as the PTI government is groaning under the weight of its multiple fault lines. There are at least ten such fault lines and they tell their own stories. Here goes...

Elected vs non-elected cabinet members: The resentment of the elected ministers has reached near boiling point. Advisers and special assistants to the PM occupy key ministries as decision-makers and elected ministers are seething at being sidelined. However PTI insiders confess that the central role of technocrats/specialists is a deliberate policy choice which stems from the party leadership's admiration for the best practices of a presidential system. Prime Minister Imran Khan said so once himself in an interaction with journalists. Clearly, the elected ministers are not amused.

Ideological members vs electables: This fault line first opened after the famous October 2 Minar-i-Pakistan jalsa and since then it has kept widening and shrinking as waves of people hooked their bandwagons to PTI. Many loyalists fell by the wayside as PTI inched towards power but the fault line remains active even though it is buried under layers of post-power fault lines. The 'OriginAals' of the PTI nurse grievances today when many of them have been elbowed out by those against whom they struggled for years on end. Life is cruel. Politics even more so.

Politicians vs bureaucrats: The office of the principal secretary to the prime minister (PSPM) is arguably the most powerful bureaucratic position in the federal government. This person's most potent weapon is that he or she controls access to the PM. PSPM is in essence the state's arm in the PM office along with the military secretary (MS). However the role of the PSPM is usually balanced by an equally critical role of some trusted political leader close to the prime minister. At one point Jehangir Tareen played this role. No one does so today and therefore the PSPM has ended up exercising significant influence. Cabinet ministers say this increased influence, via control of access to the PM, has come at their expense. No one can leverage the power of the bureaucracy better than the PSPM so when he grows powerful, so does the role of the bureaucracy.

Jehangir Khan Tareen group vs Asad Umar group: The political relevance of group members rises and falls with their leaders. Tareen group had a good run in the party when he was the secretary general and...